


Exhaustion

by Kylie Lee (kylielee1000)



Category: Donald Strachey Mysteries
Genre: M/M, POV First Person, shower, silk pajamas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-17
Updated: 2008-09-17
Packaged: 2017-10-01 23:44:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kylielee1000/pseuds/Kylie%20Lee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Who needs sleep? Not Don.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Exhaustion

**Author's Note:**

> Under the wire, so no beta. Posted to [Nick N Nora](http://community.livejournal.com/nick_n_nora/) as part of the Exhaustion challenge. This fic combines aspects of the characters as presented in the films and in the books. This story is, like the novels, in first person. Originally posted September 21, 2007.

"No, really, I should just go to bed."

Timmy caught me as I wobbled. He turned away long enough to take my camera case and stow it by the door, which he locked behind me. "You've been tailing that guy for three days straight," he scolded as, thanks to his support, I was able to struggle out of my shoes. I didn't dare lean down to untie the laces, in case I fell on my face, so I simply walked out of them, which proved surprisingly difficult. "Oh, my," he said, politely averting his face as I stumbled into him.

"Yes, for three days, I've lived off of fake Egg McMuffins and this black stuff that the gas station calls coffee," I babbled. "Frankly, I don't believe them. That wasn't coffee. It might have been a semisentient life form from a galaxy far, far away. That wouldn't have surprised me. Its being coffee—that was the shocker." I gently disengaged myself from Timmy's iron grip as I shrugged off my heavy coat and let it fall gracefully to the floor, from which, as if by magic, it would transport itself to a hangar in the closet. I suspected Timmy's hand in this endeavor, but I didn't like to think about it too much. Cleaning up was, after all, Timmy's bailiwick.

Albany in winter! How I hated it. And trailing some guy for three solid days, to New York City and back, only to discover that his piece on the side was a local girl—I was just glad it was over. I had the pictures, but I'd lived in my car for the last few days. My feet were still frozen. As I weaved toward the sofa, my mind ran Timmy's words backward. He'd said, "Oh, my." I pondered for what felt like a brief moment as I puzzled out his meaning, until Timmy again took my arm—apparently I'd been standing in the middle of the room and not walking toward the sofa, as I'd thought—and steered me past the sofa, into the hall of our fabulously expensive experiment in rehabbing.

"When you say 'oh, my'—" I began.

"Shower," Timmy said firmly. "And you should brush your teeth. You should definitely brush your teeth."

"It was that pseudocoffee," I argued weakly as we stopped outside the bathroom door. The very thought of lifting my leg high enough to step into the claw-foot tub made me want to weep. I could fall asleep leaning against the hallway wall. I tried that, but Timmy pushed the bathroom door open with a shoulder and gave me a tug. "I got the pictures, though," I continued. "Obviously. Which is why I'm home. Incriminating evidence and all that."

"Incriminating evidence of what?"

"Cheating, for a divorce case. The wife suspected, and she was right." At Timmy's look, which I caught thanks to the mirror above the sink, I added, "What? This isn't a gay-client thing. Some of my clients aren't part of that whole lifestyle, you know."

"All the interesting ones are." Timmy handed me my toothbrush, then blobbed a pea-sized bit of toothpaste atop it.

I made a noncommittal noise around the toothbrush. It's true that the case wasn't that interesting, but it would pay the bills—including a mortgage payment on this approximately $1.62 billion edifice that we called home. I thought I had enough energy to just step into the tub, but I would probably need his help to get out. "I often think about what my profession would be like if no-fault divorce hadn't become the law of the land," I said, thoughtful. I paused to scrub my teeth. "All those staged pictures of men and their mistresses—" I sighed nostalgically, even though I had never been a part of that world. "Those days of easy money are gone." I tested the water. It seemed about the right temperature, so I pulled on the knob atop the tub's faucet, the tub made a loud _thunk,_ and water came pouring out of the showerhead.

I'd put one leg over the rim of the tub when Timmy grabbed me. "I should just put you to bed," he grumbled as he started unbuttoning my shirt. "Except then I'd have to sleep on the sofa, because you are _disgusting._"

Clothes. Right. I needed to take those off before I plunged into the shower. "Oh, yeah, baby," I said, watching his fingers with interest. I loved the blue tinge underneath his skin, his patrician hands, his carefully manicured fingers.

"Thank you," Timmy said repressively.

"Did I say that out loud?" I asked. I was pretty sure I'd been thinking it. Maybe drinking all that pseudocoffee had made me psychic, able to beam my thoughts directly into Timmy's mind. But I doubted it.

"I'm glad you approve of my personal grooming," Timothy said stiffly, thus answering my question, and I started to laugh. Once I started, I couldn't stop, and I stood there, shaking with laughter, toothbrush in mouth, foam dribbling from my lips, while my lover stripped off my clothes.

"I haven't slept in more than three days," I gasped to Timmy as he undid my pants.

"I noticed."

"Hey there, big boy," I purred as Timmy dragged my pants down; then I collapsed in another laughing fit. Unfortunately, my dick didn't respond to his proximity, which made my lewd comment superfluous. After Timmy wrestled my socks off, I tried to enter the shower again, only this time, instead of stripping off my clothing, Timmy made a weird shrieking noise that indicated to me that the time to enter the shower was not yet ripe. "What now?" I demanded around the toothbrush.

Timmy adjusted the faucets. "I would prefer you not scald yourself," he said as the steam coming from the shower decreased markedly. He shook water from his hands as he backed away. His glasses had fogged up. "Okay. You can go in now."

"About time," I grumbled. I slid a little as I entered the tub. I opened up my mouth to get some water, then began brushing my teeth in earnest. The invigorating peppermint flavor of ecofriendly Tom's of Maine toothpaste chased away the alien invaders living within my molars. "I could just sleep on the sofa," I informed him. "Me, not you. Or—maybe I should have gone back to the office. The floor there is comfy. I have spent the night on that floor before."

"I can't understand a word you're saying," Timmy said, exasperated. "Will you be all right by yourself?"

I gave my tongue a firm, thorough brushing before tossing my toothbrush in the general direction of the sink. Luckily, it made it. If it had hit the floor, Timmy would have thrown it away, and I'd come to like my toothbrush, with its cheerful purple handle and its delightfully maneuverable compact head. I'd gotten it free from the dentist last month, and I'd formed an inexplicable attachment to it. I held my mouth open underneath the spray of hot, but not scalding, water and spat to rinse. "No," I told him, mostly to fuck with him. "You need to scrub my back."

"Right." Timmy sounded dubious, and rightfully so.

"No, really. It's a personal hygiene thing." The heat of the water was starting to chase away the cold. "Come on," I wheedled, peering out from behind the shower curtain. "Three days in the field. Cut me some slack. Give me a break. Also, I may be too tired to shampoo my hair." I paused, struck. "What time is it?"

"It's two in the morning." To my delight, Timmy removed his glasses, folded them, and stuck them on the sink. It meant he was going to help me in the shower. That was always fun, although I suspected that sheer exhaustion meant that I was not at my best. Still, exhausted or not, I always appreciated a nude Timothy Callahan.

"I should have known that, being a private eye and all," I mused as Timmy began unbuttoning. "You're wearing your silk pajamas. Pajamas equals night. Also, it's dark out." I hadn't been able to find my key, so I'd leaned on the doorbell. I might have fallen asleep while leaning, now that I thought about it. I wasn't sure how I'd gotten home. Presumably I had driven.

"They're not silk, they're cotton." Timmy folded—folded!—his pajama top and laid it atop the toilet seat lid, and I leered on cue. Timmy had a very nice chest.

"Why didn't you fold my clothes?" I asked plaintively, because mine were still scattered about the bathroom floor, but then I immediately got sidetracked by the thought of Timmy wearing silk pajamas. "You seem like a silk-pajama kind of guy to me," I mused, but before he could come back at me with a zinger of a line, he slid down his pajama bottoms, revealing all, and I growled, "Now that's what I'm talking about. Do you work out? Get in here."

I grabbed my scratchy blue nylon puff as Timmy folded his pajama bottoms and added them to the pile on the toilet, affording me a great view of his ass. A second later, he climbed in beside me.

"Much better," he said approvingly, leaning in for a quick kiss. "I think the water is covering up the smell." He leaned across and down for something, and I gently scrubbed his shoulder blade with my puff in a gesture of friendly solidarity. He stood up a second later, shampoo in hand, and he might have smiled at me, but I was distracted by the proximity of his chest, which was indeed very nice.

"Mmm," I said, shutting my eyes as I gently kissed the top of his very, very interesting chest, right under his collarbone. "Oh. Yes. Mmm. Ow!" This last was said in a tone of wounded surprise as Timmy grabbed my head, stuck it briefly under the wonderfully warm water, and then began raking his fingers through my hair with a rhythmic back-and-forth scratching movement. It took me a second to realize that he wasn't engaging in some rambunctious form of foreplay but was instead shampooing my hair. "I find that...strangely soothing," I gasped as Timmy worked up a lather. I had to close my eyes as the suds dripped down my face. It smelled good; Timmy was using his special manly hair-care products on me, rather than the cheap Suave I used, and I found it touching. I personally was afraid to use Timmy's hair products because they needed to be applied in some arcane order that required reading instructions, which I wasn't about to do for hair. "You're not going to shave me, are you?" I suggested hopefully. I hadn't shaved for three days, either.

"Yes, Don. In the shower. With a straight razor. I'm going to shave you all over."

"That ought to be...interesting," I responded, giving up and relaxing into Timmy's fingers. If he preferred to suds up my hair rather than have his chest kissed, that was his lookout. "Have we done that before? Or am I thinking of another hot guy with a great chest?"

"It's hard to remember. I am an ace with a straight razor. There have been so many. I still get requests."

I blinked as Timmy let go of my head and let the water rinse me off. "That explains why you get so many looks when we go out. I thought it was because you were with me. But I see now that there's far more to it." I put my arms around him and half-turned him so he joined me under the spray of water. "You should get wet too. It sets off your chest. And other parts."

I put a friendly hand on his posterior, and I felt an encouraging poke as his erection hit my stomach. This time, the Tom's of Maine–scented kiss we exchanged wasn't perfunctory, and I shut my eyes and relaxed into his embrace. Although I was exhausted, I hadn't seen Timothy for three long days, and my interest quickly became evident.

"None of that," Timmy said to discourage me, and I blinked at him. Somehow he'd gotten my scratchy puff, and now he squeezed some shower gel onto it. "It's a school night."

"I don't even know what day it is," I groaned as Timmy started in with the puff. "You're a vigorous washer. Clearly you've done this before." I stood patiently while he scrubbed me all over. "Oh," I moaned as he turned me around and made long stripes up and down my back. "That feels...incredibly good." It did. He paid attention to my butt, and when I lifted my arms up, he scrubbed first under my right arm, then my left.

"That should get the worst of the smell—that and the toothbrushing," Timmy muttered.

"You missed a spot," I said, taking the hand that wasn't disinterestedly wielding the puff and putting it on my cock. "Admit it. You were saving the best for last."

"I was. I do admit it," Timmy said obediently, but his hand closed around my erection and started to stroke. He stood behind me, his chest pressed against my back, and I turned my head so he could nibble my ear. Timmy's back took the brunt of the spray.

I made encouraging noises as Timmy's hand tightened and set a rhythm. The soap from the shower gel meant that his hand was slick, which felt incredibly good. When his warm mouth enveloped my earlobe, I reached behind to grab his head. He started to suck in earnest, and—

"Shit," I said, and then I came, pumping hard, Timmy's hand squeezing just right. It felt great, a huge release of pressure, leaving behind only floating ecstasy. "Oh, god. I really, really needed that," I gasped, knees weak.

Timmy chuckled in my ear. "That was fast."

"Sorry," I said, contrite. I really was exhausted, I realized. Usually I could stretch something like this out to more than two minutes. "Give me a sec. I can go again."

Timmy knew a line when he heard one, because he said, "It's okay. I should tuck you in."

I managed to turn around to face him without going flying; I was still soapy, and my feet tended to slide, even on the rubber bath mat. "What about you?" I offered, reaching for his cock, which stood out proudly. I gave it a stroke. "You definitely seem interested."

"It's kind of a turn-on, your coming so fast," Timmy allowed. "Plus you're slippery and all. But you're exhausted."

I knelt carefully, grabbing the side of the tub with one hand and the side of Timmy with the other. "Then we can make it fast and go straight to bed," I promised. Before he could foolishly deny himself pleasure out of a misguided desire to put me to bed, I took his cock in my mouth. I didn't waste any time: I took him in as far as I could, which, after years of practice with this particular activity, was pretty far. Because of the water, he didn't taste like himself, and I found that I missed his scent. The faint, clean smell of soap was no substitute for a hot Timothy Callahan.

"Right. We can make it fast," Timmy agreed, putting his fingers back into my hair, only this time, they didn't scrub shampoo around. Instead, he pulled and pushed with little movements of his hand, indicating the speed he wanted, and I obliged. I felt him get hotter, but I didn't taste the drop of acrid liquid that meant he was about to come.

After a few enjoyable minutes of head pulling and cock sucking, I realized I was about to pass out from a combination of postcoital relaxation and sheer exhaustion. "I think your time is up," I told him, gazing up at him as he caressed the side of my face, playing with the scratchy whiskers. "You only get two minutes. That's all I needed."

"You're going to leave me hanging? Hard and hanging?"

"The room is spinning," I said truthfully. I put my hands on his hips, partly to steady myself. "Actually, it's a lucky thing I'm kneeling."

"In that case—" Timmy poured a little shower gel in his palm and lathered up. "You can time me," he said, and he began to jack off.

"Oh, wow," I said, because although I'd seen him do this before, I'd never been quite so close. My face was literally inches from his penis. I watched as he held his balls with one hand and worked his cock with the other. He used his fingers more than his hand, squeezing hard near the tip, massaging himself expertly. He wasn't wasting any time. My sucking had gotten him hard and hot, and now he was finishing himself off.

"Shut your eyes," Timmy gasped, and I immediately did, just before he spurted in my face. I felt four more loads hit me on my forehead and cheeks. When I finally felt safe enough to crack my eyes open, I saw that he held his semihard cock pointed down as he squeezed out the last drops.

"Jesus. We should do fast more often." I wiped my face, and Timmy put his hands on my shoulders. It seemed the room was spinning for him too, I thought approvingly.

"We should. Except slow is so much fun too."

"And medium. I like medium."

"Medium is a classic." Then, in a much different tone of voice, "Oh, dear!"

"Oh, dear?" I repeated.

"The hot water just ran out."

"Oh, dear," I agreed as Timmy shoved aside the shower curtain and stepped out, allowing tepid water to rain down on me. I wiped jism off my face as tepid gave way to cold, and I yelped, exhaustion momentarily forgotten. "Don't mind me," I called as I shuffled forward on my knees. "I'm just rinsing off. The cold is invigorating—is that the word?"

"It's _a_ word," Timmy agreed as, sperm- and soap-free at last, I shut off the water. "Here." He handed me a fluffy towel, still neatly folded.

I didn't bother to unfold it. I scrubbed the folded-up towel across my hair, then wiped my face. At least the bathroom was steamy and warm. "Can I borrow some silk pajamas?" I begged, attempting to dry my arms despite the bulkiness of the towel.

"You may." Timmy, mostly dry and now wearing his pajama bottoms, knelt beside the tub and took the towel from me. "You're hopeless," he said tenderly, kissing me on the mouth.

"Mmm," I agreed, kissing him back. Timmy shook the towel out and began drying me off. I admired the way his pajama bottoms rode low on his hips, the way his shoulder and arm flexed as he applied the towel. "It's too bad it's a school night, or we could sleep in late tomorrow and cuddle. And have sex. Medium-fast sex. Or possibly medium-slow sex."

"Maybe I'll have a sore throat tomorrow and call in sick," Timmy suggested. "I'm sure the senator's office can run for a day without me."

"Don't toy with me," I ordered as Timmy helped me out of the tub. I wrapped the towel around my shoulders and shuffled after Timmy into the cold, cold hallway, then into our cozy bedroom. My legs were still wet, and I felt goosebumps on my goosebumps. "You hardly ever call in sick. Usually, when you do, it's because you're sick. No, better to hope for big snow, rendering it unsafe to drive. During my stakeout, I listened to a lot of radio, and they talked about snow."

"Snow here?" Timmy asked, sounding surprised.

"Well, no," I admitted. "Snow in New York City. Did I mention I drove to New York?" I sat on the bed and dried off my legs.

"You did not."

"Well, I did. But I'm back now." I let the towel fall to the ground. It, like my coat, would be magically hung up tomorrow, by elves or possibly brownies.

"And I'm happy to see you." I heard Timmy's voice from far away as I let myself fall backward onto the bed. "Don, where are those silk pajamas my mother got you for Christmas two years ago?"

"In their box in the attic, probably," I said, only it came out sounding something like, "Mmmfff."

"Don?" Timmy asked.

I swore I heard him shake his head as something warm was tossed over me, but it was probably my imagination. The bed shifted as Timmy crawled in beside me, and I felt him urge me onto my side.

"Good night," he whispered in my ear, and he tucked himself in behind me.

I smiled as, warm, dry, and secure, I let myself drift.

It was.


End file.
